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State to audit 20 Detroit polling places

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The presidential election recount in Michigan may be over, but state election officials aren't done yet. They are  planning an audit of about 20 Detroit polling places.

During the short-lived recount, the Michigan Bureau of Elections discovered a number of places where the number of ballots in the recount containers didn’t match the reported number of voters.

Now about 20 polling places in the city will be audited. 

Fred Woodhams is with the Michigan Secretary of State’s Office. He said the Detroit elections staff said it was simple human error – but the state plans to verify that. 

“We want to give people reassurance about what happened and we will look into the matter thoroughly and if there’s more action that needs to be taken we will do that,” he said. 

Woodhams said even though the ballots didn’t go into the right box for the recount, the votes were counted on Election Day. 

“Voters should know when they mark their ballot and they feed it into the tabulator, it is being counted,” he said. “So the fact that the ballots were not properly transferred into a field container doesn’t affect the fact that their ballot was counted.”

Before becoming the newest Capitol reporter for the Michigan Public Radio Network, Cheyna Roth was an attorney. She spent her days fighting it out in court as an assistant prosecuting attorney for Ionia County. Eventually, Cheyna took her investigative and interview skills and moved on to journalism. She got her masters at Michigan State University and was a documentary filmmaker, podcaster, and freelance writer before finding her home with NPR. Very soon after joining MPRN, Cheyna started covering the 2016 presidential election, chasing after Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, and all their surrogates as they duked it out for Michigan. Cheyna also focuses on the Legislature and criminal justice issues for MPRN. Cheyna is obsessively curious, a passionate storyteller, and an occasional backpacker. Follow her on Twitter at @Cheyna_R
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